July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
The Internet of Things
A review of Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up by Philip N. Howard
Region: Comparative Theoretical General
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
Making Democratic Waves
A review of Making Waves: Democratic Contention in Europe and Latin America Since the Revolutions of 1848 by Kurt Weyland.
January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1
On Democratic Backsliding
Old-fashioned military coups and blatant election-day fraud are becoming mercifully rarer these days, but other, subtler forms of democratic regression are a growing problem that demands more attention.
January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1
The Authoritarian Threat: The Hijacking of “Soft Power”
Although the leading authoritarian regimes are today integrated in many ways into the global system, they have not become more like the democracies; instead, they have been devising policies and practices aimed at blocking democracy’s advance.
January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1
The Authoritarian Threat: Weaknesses of Autocracy Promotion
While “autocracy promotion” presents a real danger, its influence so far has been limited. Because authoritarian regimes are concerned first with furthering their own interests, their interventions often have contradictory effects, sometimes even inadvertently fostering greater pluralism.
January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1
The Quest for Good Governance: Learning from Virtuous Circles
Are the “virtuous circles” crucial to good governance always the product of long-term developments under unique historical circumstances, or can they be started or accelerated by wise policies?
January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1
Transition Leaders Speak
A review of Democratic Transitions: Conversations with World Leaders, edited by Sergio Bitar and Abraham F. Lowenthal.
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
Decentralizing for a Deeper, More Supple Democracy
Can decentralization deepen democracy or is it doomed to weaken the state? If well designed, decentralization can have a positive impact on national unity, conflict mitigation, policy autonomy, service delivery, and social learning.
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
Exploring “Non-Western Democracy”
Often called for but seldom defined with any precision, “non-Western democracy” could end up giving cover to authoritarianism, but also could allow potentially useful democratic innovations to be tried and tested.
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
The Evolution of Political Order
A review of Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama.
July 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
Structural Conditions and Democratization
How are trends in global democratization likely to be shaped by the distribution of such key structural factors as income, ethnic or religious diversity, and the quality of the state?
July 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
Authoritarian Successor Parties
Why do significant numbers of people, after gaining the right to choose their leaders via free and fair elections, vote for political parties with deep roots in dictatorship, and how do such parties affect the consolidation of democracy?
April 2015, Volume 26, Issue 2
Transitional Justice and Its Discontents
The impulse to have crimes against humanity investigated and punished, like the impulse behind “truth and reconciliation” commissions, is understandable. But legalism cannot supersede the hard and messy work of politics.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
Is Democracy in Decline?
As the Journal of Democracy celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary, there are serious reasons to worry about the state of democracy.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
Why Is Democracy Performing So Poorly?
The failure to establish modern, well-governed states has been the Achilles heel of recent democratic transitions, as democratization without state modernization can actually lower the quality of governance.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
The Weight of Geopolitics
Can democracy prosper when democratic countries are in geopolitical retreat? History cautions against the notion that democracy will inevitably prevail.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
Crisis and Transition, But Not Decline
Rather than being in decline, democracy is in crisis due to the gap between the democratic ideal and how democracy is actually being practiced. It will survive by transitioning into a new, as yet unknown, form.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
The Myth of Democratic Recession
In contrast to the conventional wisdom that democracy is in retreat worldwide, the evidence tells a different story: The state of global democracy has been stable over the last decade and is actually better than it was in the 1990s.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
Democracy Aid at 25: Time to Choose
From small beginnings, democracy aid has become a sizeable enterprise. Today it is beset by problems, however, as it must operate in a less friendly environment. Hard decisions will need to be made to maintain its relevance.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
Facing Up to the Democratic Recession
Democracy has been in a global recession for most of the last decade, and committed and resourceful engagement by the established democracies is necessary to reverse this trend.
October 2014, Volume 25, Issue 4
Flirting with Disaster
A review of The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present by David Runciman.
July 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3
The End of the Transitions Era?
Regime change will always be a feature of political life, but we are unlikely to see again transitions to democracy on the scale of the “third wave.”
July 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3
Gay Rights: Why Democracy Matters
The year 2013 featured unprecedented strides for gay rights in some parts of the world, particularly in Western Europe and the Americas, but also startling setbacks elsewhere, as in Russia and some countries in Africa.
July 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3
Will Malaysia Follow the Path of Taiwan and Mexico?
The hegemonic-party systems of Taiwan and Mexico began to loosen in the 1980s, eventually yielding to democracy. Malaysia’s ruling party, by contrast, has tightened the reins of power in the face of increasing opposition.
July 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3
V-Dem: A New Way to Measure Democracy
In order to mark democracy’s progress and to inform policy, we need to be able to measure democracy in sufficient detail. The V-Dem Project aims to deliver exactly such a tool.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
Ethnic Power Sharing: Three Big Problems
In severely divided societies, ethnic cleavages tend to produce ethnic parties and ethnic voting. Power-sharing institutions can ameliorate this problem, but attempts to establish such institutions, whether based on a consociational or a centripetal model, face formidable difficulties.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
Democratic Parliamentary Monarchies
How do democracies emerge from monarchies? In an essay that eminent political scientist Juan J. Linz was working on when he passed away in October 2013, he and his coauthors draw lessons from the European experience about whether and how Arab monarchies might aid or resist democratic development.
January 2014, Volume 25, Issue 1
Reconsidering the “Transition Paradigm”
Four leading experts on democracy discuss the relevance of the “transition paradigm” in light of the “Arab Spring” and other developments in the world today.
January 2014, Volume 25, Issue 1
Power Failure?
A review of The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be by Moisés Naím.
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
Democracy and the Quality of the State
What is the relationship between high-quality state administration and democracy? A look back at modern Greece and Italy, along with Germany and the United States, provides some insights.
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
Reflections on “Governance”
“Governance,” once merely a synonym for government, has taken on new meanings that tend to downplay the importance of the political. But can “good governance” be achieved today without the protections of liberal democracy?
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
The Third Wave: Inside the Numbers
Is democracy threatened by a “reverse wave”? Examining regional patterns and distinguishing between different types of democracy gives us a new basis for assessing this question. Listen to the podcast with authors Jørgen Møller and Svend-Erik Skaaning [mp3]
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
Research Report: Assessing the Quality of Elections
Determining whether an election has met international standards is a pressing issue for both practitioners and scholars. An important new study aims to systematize the assessment of electoral integrity.
July 2013, Volume 24, Issue 3
Kishore’s World
The widely hailed writings of Singapore’s Kishore Mahbubani, including his latest book, The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World, reveal a remarkably narrow and Manichean worldview.
April 2013, Volume 24, Issue 2
Democratization Theory and the “Arab Spring”
In light of the “Arab Spring,” how should students of democratic transition rethink the relation between religion and democracy; the nature of regimes that mix democratic and authoritarian features; and the impact of “sultanism” on prospects for democracy?
April 2013, Volume 24, Issue 2
Armies and Revolutions
A key factor in determining the success or failure of revolutions is how the national armed forces react. What are the keys to making accurate predictions about what the soldiers will do when the fate of a regime hangs in the balance?
January 2013, Volume 24, Issue 1
Controlling Corruption Through Collective Action
Political competition by itself does not curb corruption. Societies must also have a combination of values, social capital, civil society, and civic culture in order to impose effective normative constraints on corruption.
January 2013, Volume 24, Issue 1
Regime Types and Democratic Sequencing
How should we define the stages of democracy and their sequencing? Although some scholars argue that the rule of law should come first, today it should be viewed as the final piece of the liberal-democratic puzzle.
October 2012, Volume 23, Issue 4
Media and Democracy: The Long View
Modern democracy was born in the era of print, and the press has been one of its essential institutions. With the decline of newspapers and the rise of new media, what are the implications for democracy?
October 2012, Volume 23, Issue 4
Politics in Crisis?
Although politics today is in critical condition—some even say it is dying—it is all the more important to revive it.
October 2012, Volume 23, Issue 4
The Ethnocracy Trap
A political system in which power is formally divided among ethnic or sectarian groups may seem like a good idea in conflict-ridden societies, but it bears a high price and makes true democratic transition harder to achieve.
April 2012, Volume 23, Issue 2
Discovering the “State-Nation”
A review of Crafting State-Nations: India and Other Multinational Democracies by Alfred Stepan, Juan J. Linz, and Yogendra Yadav.
April 2012, Volume 23, Issue 2
Václav Havel (1936–2011)
A tribute to Václav Havel—one of the most revered democratic leaders and thinkers of our time—who passed away on 18 December 2011. Included are a document issued by the signers of China's Charter '08 and some reflections, originally published in the Mainichi Daily News, by Aung San Suu Kyi.
April 2012, Volume 23, Issue 2
Guillermo O’Donnell (1936–2011)
Tributes to the eminent political scientist Guillermo O'Donnell, who passed away on 29 October 2011, written by O'Donnell's former coauthor Philippe C. Schmitter and by Scott Mainwaring of the Kellogg Institute, which O'Donnell helped to found.
January 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1
Between Authoritarianism and Democracy
A review of Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War by Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way.
October 2011, Volume 22, Issue 4
Comparing the Arab Revolts: The Global Context
Although the Arab revolts have a long way to go before they can be counted as gains for democracy, they do underline what is perhaps democracy’s greatest source of strength worldwide—its superior legitimacy.
October 2011, Volume 22, Issue 4
Comparing the Arab Revolts: The Lessons of 1989
The Arab events of 2011 may have some similarities to the wave of popular upheavals against authoritarianism that swept the Soviet bloc starting in 1989, but the differences are much more fundamental.
October 2011, Volume 22, Issue 4
Do New Democracies Support Democracy? The Multilateral Dimension
When it comes to backing democracy and human rights in international forums, the behavior of the world’s six most influential rising democracies ranges from sympathetic support to borderline hostility.
October 2011, Volume 22, Issue 4
Fukuyama’s Grand Vision
A review of The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution by Francis Fukuyama.
July 2011, Volume 22, Issue 3
Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy: Dealing with Inequality
Many new democracies have faltered due to high levels of inequality and a deep polarization between the rich and poor. What is the relationship between modern liberal democracy and socioeconomic inequality?
April 2011, Volume 22, Issue 2
The Freedom House Survey for 2010: Democracy Under Duress
The past decade began at a high point for freedom but ended with freedom in peril. Yet the setbacks of the last five years do not outweigh the democratic gains of the last forty.
April 2011, Volume 22, Issue 2
Liberation Technology: Whither Internet Control?
Paradoxically, the rising profile of “liberation technology” may push Internet-control efforts into nontechnological areas—imprisonment rather than censorship, for example—for which there is no easy technical “fix.”
April 2011, Volume 22, Issue 2
FOI Laws Around the World
Are laws guaranteeing citizens freedom of access to public information (FOI laws) among the most important democratic innovations of the last century?
January 2011, Volume 22, Issue 1
The Impact of the Economic Crisis: Why Democracies Survive
As an analysis of recent electoral results shows, the world’s emerging democracies are weathering the global economic crisis surprisingly well. Yet they remain under an even sharper threat from their own failures to deliver good governance.
January 2011, Volume 22, Issue 1
The Impact of the Economic Crisis: From the G-8 to the G-20
The financial crisis did not deal a fatal blow to any democracies, but it did hasten an erosion of the influence of the West. In the future, the balance of power among competing regime types may be decided by the emerging-market democracies.
January 2011, Volume 22, Issue 1
Building Democracy While Building Peace
Why are peacebuilding operations rarely able to establish postconflict democracies, and are there other strategies that would yield more successes?
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
Democracy Support and Development Aid: The Case for Principled Agnosticism
The development community now agrees with the democracy community that politics matters, but the two communities still differ in their understanding of what drives changes in institutions.
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
Democracy Support and Development Aid: Getting Convergence Right
Development specialists and democracy-support experts should recognize—and maximize—each other’s relative strengths and comparative advantages.
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
Liberation vs. Control: The Future of Cyberspace
Are technologies giving greater voice to democratic activists in authoritarian societies, or more powerful tools to their oppressors?
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
The Meanings of Democracy: Introduction
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
The Authoritarian Challenge
A review of Victorious and Vulnerable: Why Democracy Won in the 20th Century and How It Is Still Imperiled by Azar Gat.
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
Election Observers and Their Biases
Why do election monitors sometimes issue contradictory statements or endorse flawed elections? The answers are not always straightforward; in some cases, the monitors’ good intentions may undermine their credibility.
April 2010, Volume 21, Issue 2
Democracy and Deep Divides
How do democracies deal with the deep divisions created by race, ethnicity, religion, and language? The cases of Canada, India, and the United States show that democratic institutions—notably, competitive elections and independent judiciaries—can bridge divides and build stability, but they must find a way to manage the tension between individual and group equality.
April 2010, Volume 21, Issue 2
The Ballot and the Badge: Democratic Policing
In emerging democracies and postconflict countries, improved policing is almost always urgently required. Yet international-assistance efforts in this area pay almost no attention to the crucial need to ensure that the new-model police are not only effective, but democracy-friendly.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
Democracy’s Past and Future
The Editors' introduction to the Journal of Democracy's Twentieth Anniversary Issue.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
Twenty-Five Years, Fifteen Findings
A coauthor of the pathbreaking study Transitions from Authoritarian Rule reflects on the lessons that he has learned about democratic transition and consolidation since the publication of this work nearly 25 years ago.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
Schmitter’s Retrospective: A Few Dissenting Notes
Another coauthor of Transitions from Authoritarian Rule questions whether his former collaborator is underrating the current dangers to democracy.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
Transitions to the Rule of Law
While we have witnessed many transitions to multiparty systems, it has proven much harder for countries to attain a genuine rule of law. We need to know more about the origins of the rule of law in order to promote it successfully today.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
The Crash of ’08
The short-term political impact of the economic crisis has been less dramatic than initially expected, but it may have lasting effects on the “quality” of democracy, including the legitimacy of prevailing financial institutions.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
Why Democracy Needs a Level Playing Field
In some countries, democratic competition is undermined less by electoral fraud or repression than by a skewed playing field—unequal access to state institutions, resources, and the media.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
Authoritarianism’s Last Line of Defense
The new electoral authoritarian regimes of the post–Cold War era have formally adopted the full panoply of liberal-democratic institutions. Rather than rejecting or repressing these institutions, they manipulate them.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
Populism, Pluralism, and Liberal Democracy
In recent years, scholars have begun to focus on the sources of "authoritarian resilience." But democracy has also shown surprising resilience, in part because the disorders to which it is prone tend to counteract each other.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
Democratic Triumph, Scholarly Pessimism
By any measure, democratization has achieved remarkable advances over the past twenty years. Why, then, have so many of the leading works written on the topic during this period been so full of gloom?
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy (II): Does Electoral Democracy Boost Economic Equality?
The recent global progress of democracy has been accompanied by increasing economic inequality. What are the implications for the quality of democracy and for its ability to endure?
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
A New Approach to Postwar Reconstruction
As countries emerge from war and embark on recovery, the risk of corruption is high and the consequences are dire. International aid must be accompanied by an anticorruption strategy that incorporates community-driven accountability.
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
Escaping the Development Impasse
A review of Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places by Paul Collier.
July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
Democratization by Elections? A Mixed Record
Evidence suggests that under some circumstances repeated elections, even if flawed, can lead to democratization.
July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
Arms and the Humanitarian
A review of Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention by Gary J. Bass.
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
Religion and Democracy
The secularization hypothesis has failed, and failed spectacularly. We must find a new paradigm to help us understand the complexities of the relationship between religion and democracy.
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
The 2008 Freedom House Survey: A Third Year of Decline
Although 2008 was marked by democratic setbacks as well as authoritarian “pushback” against reformers, democracy remains the only system of government that commands global respect.
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
The Consequences of Democratization
For the past few decades, scholars have been focusing on the causes of democratization. It is now time to devote systematic attention to analyzing the costs and benefits that democracy brings.
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
Tocqueville’s Frontiers
A review of Conversations with Tocqueville: The Global Democratic Revolution in the Twenty-First Century edited by Aurelian Craiutu and Sheldon Gellar and Tocqueville et les frontières de la démocratie by Nestor Capdevila.
January 2009, Volume 20, Issue 1
Democracy Assistance: Political vs. Developmental?
Democracy-aid providers are moving away from one-size-fits-all strategies and are adapting their programs to diverse political contexts. Two distinct overall approaches to assisting democracy have emerged in response.
January 2009, Volume 20, Issue 1
Violence and the Rise of Open-Access Orders
For most of history, a closed social order has seemed the most “natural” way to manage the problem of controlling the use of force. The rise of modern democracy can be understood only in the context of the transition to open-access orders.
January 2009, Volume 20, Issue 1
Is Democracy Possible?
While the belief in democracy has spread around the world, it has begun to crumble in some of the West’s finest academic institutions.
October 2008, Volume 19, Issue 4
Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy
The Editors’ introduction to “Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy.”
October 2008, Volume 19, Issue 4
Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy: Why Democracies Fail
Many of today’s developing-world and postcommunist democracies are at risk of reversal. What are the key factors that lead to democratic collapse?
July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3
Islamist Parties and Democracy: Three Kinds of Movements
The rise of Islamist parties poses new challenges to efforts to understand the relationship between Islam and democracy. A diverse group of authors investigates this new phenomenon and its implications for the future of democracy in the Middle East.
July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3
A New Look at Ethnicity and Democratization
Conventional scholarly wisdom holds that ethnic diversity within a given society generally dims democracy’s prospects. Careful reflection on the experience of many post-Soviet states, however, suggests that this need not be so.
April 2008, Volume 19, Issue 2
The 2007 Freedom House Survey: Is the Tide Turning?
Authoritarian pushback continued to affect key regions and countries in 2007, but the courage, energy, and creativity that democrats continued to show gives reason to think that their cause has brighter days ahead.
April 2008, Volume 19, Issue 2
Public Opinion and Democratic Legitimacy
Do young democracies have to "deliver the goods" economically in order to win political legitimacy in their citizens' eyes? Public opinion data from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Arab world suggest some fascinating answers.
January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1
The Role of Ordinary People in Democratization
In order for a country to move beyond mere electoral democracy, ordinary people must acquire resources and values that allow them to pressure elites. Human empowerment is essential for the development of "effective democracy."
October 2007, Volume 18, Issue 4
A Quarter-Century of Promoting Democracy
On 7 June 2007, the National Endowment for Democracy commemorated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the "Westminster Address" with a panel discussion and reception in Madison Hall at the Library of Congress.
October 2007, Volume 18, Issue 4
Understanding Democracy: Data from Unlikely Places
Some skeptics have asked whether ordinary people possess an understanding of democracy that allows them to evaluate it as a form of government. Our research yields three generalizations about popular understanding of democracy.
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
Exchange: The Sequencing “Fallacy”
Countries taking the initial steps from dictatorship toward electoral politics are especially prone to civil and international war. Yet states endowed with coherent institutions—such as a functioning bureaucracy and the elements needed to construct a sound legal system—have often been able to democratize peacefully and successfully. Consequently, whenever possible, efforts to promote democracy should try…
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
Exchange: Liberalism versus State-Building
In certain circumstances, both liberalism and popular rule can obstruct rather than promote state-building.
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
Exchange: The Vain Hope for “Correct” Timing
The history of many of today’s established democracies shows that “out-of-sequence” democratization can lead to eventual success.
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
Exchange: Misunderstanding Gradualism
Unlike pessimistic scholars and recalcitrant autocrats, most ordinary citizens are inclined to take the risks of choosing democracy when they can.
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
Democracy Contra Politics
A review of A World Beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State by Pierre Manent.
April 2007, Volume 18, Issue 2
The Challenge of Closely Fought Elections
Closely fought elections are often fraught with conflict, splitting societies asunder. How can democracy survive such rough and close contests?